Jane Bunnett

Jane Bunnett, born in Toronto, Ontario, on October 22, 1956, began her early musical training as a classical pianist, clarinetist and flutist at Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music and transitioned into woodwinds studies exclusively following her achievement of Grade 10 piano credentials and the concurrent development of acute tendonitis.

Inspired by her first exposure to jazz through live performances by jazz luminaries Charles Mingus and Rahsaan Roland Kirk in San Francisco’s “Keystone Korner” in 1975, the prodigious 19-year-old multi-instrumentalist hopped genres and concentrated her academic efforts on jazz applications of the flute and soprano saxophone at York University in Toronto in 1979.

Originally attracted by the unrestrained options offered by artists such as John Coltrane and Pharoah Sanders, Jane embraced the invaluable legacy of Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, and Bud Powell.